OmiseGo (OMG)
Basics * Not mineable * Founded in 2013, Omise is a venture-backed payments company operating in Thailand, Japan, Singapore, and Indonesia * OmiseGo is a DApp built on the Ethereum blockchain. It is part of the parent company Omise which is payment gateway provider aiming at the South East Asian market. If you know anything about payment systems in China you will have heard of WeChat pay and AliPay. The premise is that everyone has access to a smart phone and allowing you to pay everything from bills to street vendors with a swipe of your phone is not only convenient but has become the predominant form of payment in China. Omise aims at establishing this same system in South East Asia and OmiseGo is its attempt to incorporate cryptocurrencies into this system. The positioning is unique for a couple of reasons. Firstly it allows people access to secure funds without the need for a bank account. In South East Asia only 27% of the region’s 600 million inhabitants have a bank account. Secondly it is working towards facilitating payment in FIAT as well as cryptos and making the whole process easy to understand and set up which is crucial for vendor and customer adoption. * “OmiseGO is the answer to a fundamental coordination problem amongst payment processors, gateways and financial institutions. By enabling decentralized exchange on a public blockchain at high volume and low cost, OmiseGO provides a next-generation value transfer service operating across currencies and asset types. Through the OmiseGO network connected to the Ethereum mainnet, anyone will be able to conduct financial transactions such as payments, remittances, payroll deposit, B2B commerce, supply-chain finance, loyalty programs, asset management and trading, and other on-demand services, in a completely decentralized and inexpensive way. Further, millions of mainstream users in the largest growing economies in the world will be enabled to make the transition from using fiat money to using decentralized currencies such as ETH, BTC, and others. The OmiseGO network is intrinsically agnostic between fiat and decentralized money: as far as adoption and usage go, the system is constructed so that the best currencies will win.” * “The OmiseGO Blockchain comprises a decentralized exchange, liquidity provider mechanism, clearinghouse messaging network, and asset-backed blockchain gateway. It is a scalable and totally public (permissionless) blockchain whose Proof-of-Stake consensus is bonded by the activities of the chain itself. The network is designed as a highly performant system leveraging interlinked blockchain construction: while clearing and settlement occurs over the OmiseGO blockchain, the costs of protecting transaction value is externalized to other chains in ways that directly promote the value of those chains.“ * OMG and Cosmos have decided to start spooning. Stellar, Waves and OmiseGo compared (23-10-2017) * “Stellar, Waves, and OmiseGo all aim to serve very similar use cases. All three platforms have native support for a decentralized exchange. All three platforms support multiple assets. Although Waves is not currently focused on micropayments, remittances, and mobile payments, Stellar and OmiseGo are both gunning for these three use cases. * It seems that Stellar comes out just slightly ahead of Waves as a multi-asset trading platform. Although Stellar is losing in terms of ICOs, Stellar has many more anchors than Waves has gateways. Most of Stellar’s anchors are operated by external companies that include large financial institutions. Waves, on the other hand, currently operates all of its gateways. Stellar is also currently much faster than Waves. Stellar supports a theoretical of maximum of 1000 transactions/second whereas Waves only supports 1.7 transactions/second. This will change as the WavesNG protocol comes online, but that’s not for another few months and even then, Waves’s maximum transaction throughput is still shy of Stellar’s 1000 transactions/second. * Stellar will give OmiseGo a run for its money. Almost everything that OmiseGo aims to do, Stellar is planning to do or is already doing it. Not to mention Stellar already has a robust, secure, and fast blockchain already running in the wild whereas OmiseGo is still a farcry away from even launching a public testnet. At this point we have no idea what the OmiseGo blockchain will even look like. Having a functioning public blockchain also gives Stellar a headstart in business integrations. As mentioned above, a multitude of payment companies, especially in Asia and Africa, have integrated with Stellar and are already sending payments through the platform. We also can’t forget the massive IBM and banking integration that was recently announced.“ Pros and cons Risks * Very early stages. No proven track record yet. * The marketing has been very slick and as a consequence there has been a lot of hype. Most likely overvalued (Could be said about most cryptocurrencies to be fair) Advantages * Many high profile advisors including Ethereum founder Vitalik, Lightning network co-author Joseph Poon and the founder of Golem, Julian Zawistowski. * In talks with the Thai Government. * uniquely positioned in East Asia with directed efforts towards accessing SEA, Korean and Japanese markets. * Professional presentation and organisation Team, investors, etc. * Hasegawa, Jun; CEO & Founder * Harinsut, Donnie; COO, co-founder * Poon, Joseph; advisor and principal Author * Wood, Gavin; advisor * Buterin, Vitalik; advisor * Kwon, Jae; advisor * Zamfir, Vlad; advisor * Zawistowski, Julian; advisor * Aya Miyaguchi; advisor * Ver, Roger; advisor * Eva Beylin, previously worked with them * Contributing funding to the Ethereum foundation's DEVGRANTS initiative in 2015, as well as funding the development of Raiden * Also collaborated with Hydrachain, Golem, Tendermint, and Cosmos. * Investors are: SBI Investement, SMBC, Ascend Capital, SMDV, Golden Gate Ventures, Last Ventures, 500Startups * As of 7-2019 on the partner & clients list of ZeppelinOS. * Part of the WBTC community * Is a founding member of the ECF * Does funding (1-2020) and was one of the earliest believers in Plasma Group Category:Coins/Tokens